


Dual Life

by kat8cha



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Male-Female Friendship, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 16:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Conversations Phil and Melinda have had over the years seen from two points of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dual Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [concertigrossi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/concertigrossi/gifts).



> Concertigrossi I hope you enjoy! I honestly spent a month stopping and starting fics trying to wrestle up a good one. Set loosely in MCU, relationship hinted at but never established.

Melinda isn’t someone you would consider a people person, she is most certainly not a people pleaser. She knows her strengths and they consist of this; silence, asskicking, gymnastics, more asskicking, and a fair ability to pick locks. She wasn’t terribly surprise when S.H.I.E.L.D. recruited her, she knows her skills and a shadowy government organization was as good a place as any to highlight her skills. She has hopes for S.H.I.E.L.D., her S.O. is a woman, the folder she was handed after the first month of training indicated that Peggy Carter, a woman, was one of its founding members. 

Melinda has plans. She isn’t a ladder climber but she intends to kick ass until she can’t anymore, whether she dies or retires she’s good with either. There have been hints that she would be a good handler or an information analyst but Melinda finds the idea of being stuck behind a desk a fate worse than death.

She’s working out in the gym, nothing major just some katas, when she meets him.

“Hi.” He’s wearing standard S.H.I.E.L.D. sweats, brown hair and blue eyes, the kind of jaw you can use to level a shelf. Melinda nods at him.

She expects him to step onto the mats, maybe go through his own warm up routine, or maybe he is going to ask her for a spar. There are two teams of agents sparring on the other side of the room already. She’s seen him around, he’s in the same trainee group she is. 

Instead he starts talking.

“I’m Coulson. Phil Coulson, or just Phil. Although so far everyone’s calling me Coulson.” Melinda doesn’t roll her eyes, though she wants to, or tell him to shut up, although she wants to do that too. If she lets Coulson prattle maybe he will leave her be. “And you’re Melinda May. The instructors are really impressed with you.”

Coulson does join her on the mats now but he continues to prattle. Melinda waits for him to run out of steam and finds… that it doesn’t happen.

He talks about training.

He talks about his mother.

He talks about his dog and Captain America and lunch. Eventually Melinda knows more about Coulson than she does herself. She walks away from him, heading towards the weight room, and he follows her.

She never tells him to shut up, which she is sure she could have at any time.

But she finds it oddly soothing.

White noise.

It’s nice.

\--

She’s beautiful but that isn’t why he approaches her. Coulson is a people person, even if he doesn’t always communicate well. People tend to dismiss him, he’s… well, physically he’s short, a forgettable face, brown hair which is never something people are proud of. He’s got muscle, sure, but his body isn’t the kind of body suited for body building or nude modeling. The nicest phrase that has been turned to him is ‘stocky’ although he has gotten numerous compliments on how strong his shoulders look.

In a decade or two he’ll probably be bald or balding, his Uncle had been.

He approaches Melinda because she’s… well, she’s amazing. She had the fastest score during their running trials, she had been among the candidates for S.H.I.E.L.D. who already had a black belt, and Coulson had overheard several S.H.I.E.L.D. agents speculating about her prospects. 

So he approaches her. It’s a wise choice, he’s already made friends with Jasper Sitwell (another S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee) but the more allies he has the better.

“Hi.” He greets. She’s wearing the standard S.H.I.E.L.D. sweat pants and a black ribbed tank top. Her arms are amazing, slim and muscled and she flows from one kata to another.

She’s practicing Tai Chi, if he’s not mistaken.

“I’m Coulson,” wait, “Phil Coulson, or just Phil. Although so far everyone’s calling me Coulson.” It’s true. It’s the same practice as his Catholic High School, all the men are referred to by their first names. It’s a bit of a problem when your name is popular, there are three Greens and they’re already running into trouble, but for Coulson it’s not really a problem. “And you’re Melinda May. The instructors are really impressed with you.”

She doesn’t respond but she doesn’t shoo him away. Coulson operates on instinct.

Nervous instinct.

He babbles.

She smiles in the middle of him talking about Captain America and how his story inspired Coulson joining the Rangers. He tells her a little about Marcus too, right before they head for a proper spar and she lays him on his back.

Again.

…and again.

…and again.

Coulson is 90% sure he’s in love and 10% positive she’s out of his league.

At the end, when it’s obvious Coulson can’t take much more and Melinda is looking weary as well, she reaches down to him and actually does smile.

It’s a pretty broad smile.

“Same time tomorrow?” She asks.

Coulson takes her hand and allows her to pull him up.

“Be sure to bring your A game.” Coulson shoots back.  
\--

“You’re sure we should do this?” Coulson asks, Melinda ignores his questions. She has a handful of minutes to finish her meal, one of the best hamburgers that she’s ever had and she could kiss Coulson for introducing her to diner, and she doesn’t like to waste time talking when she could be eating. “We’ll be breaking the rules.”

Melinda rolls her eyes and swallows. She’s gotten used to Coulson, she has, and she’s learned that eyerolling is sometimes the only way she can handle him. He understands eyerolling, if there was a secret language for Phil Coulson it would consist of eyerolls and aggravated sighs and blank stares when people didn’t get his jokes. 

Which was often.

“Phil,” she nudged his foot under the table, “it’ll be fun. Plus…” she took a bite of her fries and grinned, “it IS tradition.”

Coulson shook his head slowly at her but he didn’t protest, never said no, and shortly after they had paid the check they were out of the diner and on their way to a craft store. They had glue and rhinestones to procure.

“I’m still not-” Phil starts to say again when they’re swiping their badges and slipping back into S.H.I.E.L.D.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” They were carrying two bags, ostensibly full of coffee and bagels for a ‘team meeting’, the guard currently running the metal detector had been allowed a peek inside and after extracting the single cup of coffee in there had winked at them and let them through. One bag held the rhinestones, the other the Elmer’s. They had considered something with a little more longevity but Phil was worried they were going to get caught. If they got caught they wanted something easy to clean up.

Phil worried too much. He was going to end up a handler someday soon.

“If you’re going to chicken out,” and oh, the way Phil bristled made her smirk, she loved the side of him that would never back down even when he was outgunned, “speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“I’m not chickening out.”

Everyone agreed, later, that Howard Stark’s memorial had never looked so fabulous. Melinda and Phil were never implicated and their S.H.I.E.L.D. class ‘graduated’ from the academy with one of the best pranks in its history.

\--

Coulson isn’t sure that Melinda’s crazy idea isn’t inspired by the Christmas lights twinkling cheerfully around the diner’s windows. Or no, possibly it was by the lights strung up all over town because Melinda has been thinking about this prank for a while. Long enough to have felt out the security guard and pre-arranged a ‘bribe’. Long enough she knows exactly how much glue and rhinestones it would take to cover Howard Stark’s likeness in both. She could have always asked the scientists proficient in math for that, he supposed, but part of him was pretty sure she had figured it out herself.

It was more her style.

“You’re sure we should do this?” His waffles have long been eaten, his syrup has cooled and has pooled slightly on the right side of his plate. Melinda is still working her way through her burger, a much more substantial meal than his.

But then, she burns more calories than he does, not that he’s a slob but Melinda is a _powerhouse_.

“We’ll be breaking the rules.”

Which, well, was a stupid point to make. .S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are predisposed to breaking rules, practically required to break rules if they want to climb the ladder at any sort of speed. They need to meld a mix of deference and insouciance when dealing with authority and orders, at least, field agents do if they want to stay alive. Following orders from someone at base camp is good when the mission goes well but a foolish idea when it goes sour.

“Phil,” she nudged his foot under the table and smiled at him, it made his heart skip a beat. “It’ll be fun. Plus…” Melinda took a bite of her fries and grinned, “it IS tradition.”

It was. Or, well, not specifically but every batch of new agents at least tried to deface Stark’s statue.

Oddly, Dugan and Carter’s memorabilia was left untouched. 

He pays for the rhinestones, she pays for the glue. They use cash and soon they’re back at S.H.I.E.L.D. swiping their cards and being waved through. “I’m still not-”

He’s not sure how sound her plan is. So far all he’s gotten from her is ‘loop the cameras, sneak in, _decorate_ ’ which was succinct but lacked detail. Looping the cameras would work for half an hour, before security noticed, which might or might not be enough time to sufficiently jazz up Howard Stark.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do.” Melinda says, and she’s smiling at him again, the kind of smile that makes Coulson’s heart beat too fast or not fast enough, the kind of smile that makes a smart man start to sweat and fills a stupid man with foolish vigour. Coulson is not a foolish man. “If you’re going to chicken out…” 

He knows Melinda is working him up, they had a similar discussion involving skinny dipping in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s pool. It had led to a fun night and a disciplinary infraction. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”  
Phil screws his courage to the sticking post.

“I’m not chickening out.”

In twenty minutes they’re out of glue and their fingers are tacky with it, Stark’s statue is sufficiently ‘stoned and they bolt for the closest restroom so they can wash the evidence down the drain.

Coulson spends a week waiting for the other shoe to fall and is surprised that it never does.

\--

His given name was Joshua White. 

Her name was…

Her name was Reem.

Melinda holds onto that, clenches her hands around it and imprints it onto the palms of her hands in the form of bloody crescents. 

Reem Nazari.

She can see the loops of the girl’s handwriting in her mind.

She’d never seen the girl’s handwriting.

She sees the girl on the back of her eyelids, the blood and bruises, the way her head had laid against the floor.

She blinks and sees the man, Joshua, she sees his blood and brainmatter too, her hands around his neck, the way his face had pulped up when she kept beating him even though he was already dead.

He had tried to touch her.

He had touched her but not as much as he would have liked. 

Phil folds his hands around hers.

“Melinda.” She doesn’t respond. “May.” She lifts her head, meets his sympathetic eyes, sees nothing there that she wants to see. Coulson’s gaze grows more sympathetic by the passing second, he lowers his voice. “Let the girl go.”

It’s not enough.

It’s too much.

“I’m here for you.”

\--

She’s shaken. Every day that passes after the incident she shakes apart a little bit more, becomes a little less herself. She hasn’t smiled since the IAE&I and while she isn’t avoiding eye contact, she is in fact staring at people dead on, she has closed herself off from everyone.

Coulson is terrified both for her and a little bit of her (he had been there, he had been one of the agents detained, and while he knew of Melinda’s… while he knew of her skills he still had been surprised.

He doesn’t know what happened to her when meeting with White, or, he knows but… he doesn’t know all of it. Melinda had instigated the meeting with White, had insisted she speak to White alone. She had even broken out some of her ‘feminine whiles’ on the cult leader until she was escorted into the man’s private office.

The hostage not far behind.

It was only later, when White’s followers dropped to the ground screaming, crying and holding their heads that May reappeared.

She didn’t speak to Coulson, instead she turned to talk to their S.O. “I crossed him off.”

She didn’t speak again until they got back to the Hub.

Coulson sits across from her, days after the debrief, days after the incident, and watches a close friend close herself off. 

He reaches out to hold her. “Melinda.” 

She doesn’t respond.

“May.”

She finally lifts her head, looks him in the eye with the same dead… dead _serious_ gaze, not dead, not dead yet. “Let the girl go.”

It’s not enough.

“I’m here for you.”

He has to hope it’s enough.

\--

He sees her now and then. The Hub might be a large place and Coulson might be both moving around the world and moving up at S.H.I.E.L.D. but there are things he takes time for, things he goes out of his way for. Melinda is someone who he will always go out of his way for.

He never steps into the dark office she now calls her own, a barricade of paperwork separating her from the rest of the world. He never ambushes her before or after work. Never brings coffee and a donut for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon snack.

He thinks about all of those things.

He moves out of the field, just like her, becomes a handler, starts running the missions instead of being run. He gets protégés (and they all remind him of Melinda, in some way). He gets shot, stabbed, patched up, ordered around. He gets bypassed by Maria Hill, on the fast track, on the _administration_ track, which he honestly isn’t interested in. 

He works directly under Nick Fury.

He has conversations with himself, when he’s sitting alone eating waffles, directed at one person.

He begins dating outside of the agency. Artists, musicians, an actress once. 

He dies.

Comes back.

Makes good on a promise he had, in his past life, been unable to keep.


End file.
